digital technology is disrupting tv, but it also has the potential to make your tv ads more relevant....

Take Coca-Cola. Could the company use the Super Bowl to build a super relationship with consumers? Rather than a thousand more followers, could the company tap into thousands more consumers it can know by name, learn from, communicate with, and – gasp – sell product to?

Coca-Cola is sitting on an answer, even if the company doesn't realize it. Smart people inside of the storied brand launched the Coca-Cola Freestyle vending machine back in 2009. When I visit Five Guys Burgers and Fries more often than I should, the Freestyle machine lets me dispense a soft drink with one of a hundred flavor combinations, arrived at through a few quick choices. The machine became more than an efficient dispenser in 2011 when mobile agency T3 built a mobile gaming app for Coca-Cola called Freestyle PUSH! + Play. While today the app helps you find a Freestyle machine near you, when Coke figures out what it's sitting on, it will expand the app to let you pre-mix your soda on your phone, save your drink mix preferences and share them with friends. Ultimately the app will invite you to queue up your drink using your phone while you wait in line to order a burger with extra pickles...."

It's summer, and if you've got the time, we've got another massive list of funding and career opportunities to get your next film off the ground! The following grants, markets, and pitch opportunities are organized by deadline from July to early September. An asterisk next to the grant title (*) means that grant is open to both doc and narrative films. To find out more specifics on a grant, click on the title and get started.

"Over the course of a year, Sheffield Doc/Fest collaborated with Crossover Labs and film festivals around the country to run a series of workshops on interactivity and filmmaking. All six interactive platforms: Klynt, Racontr, Korsakow, Popcorn Maker, Treehouse and Storygami, give filmmakers the ability to create interactive elements for their films, without the need for a programmer to build them.

(...) My role was to attend every workshop, try out the platforms, and write a report that would explain what each of them offers to filmmakers who wish to add interactivity to their films."

The key to better, tougher and more coordinated robots as well as improved surgical procedures, among other advances, could derive their inspiration from an unlikely source – the odd, square tail of the all-around strange seahorse.

While most animal tails are cylindrical in cross-section, the seahorse has a unique, squared tail that not only provides the fish with a tough armor, but also gives it a strong grasp to hold on to things like plants or coral and "fish" for food that floats by its mouth. A paper in the most recent issue of the journal Science lays out some of the virtues of the appendage, which provides potential insight into engineering and robotics applications given its combination of strength and flexibility.

The team has been working on the research for a few years now, and we first took notice of the effort back in 2013.

"We found that this square architecture provides adequate dexterity and a tough resistance to predators, but also that it tends to snap naturally back into place once it’s been twisted and deformed," said co-author Ross Hatton, an assistant engineering professor at Oregon State University. "This could be very useful for robotics applications that need to be strong, but also energy-efficient and able to bend and twist in tight spaces."

How An Old Tactic Makes Your Brand Human. Storytelling has experienced somewhat of a recent renaissance as marketers are looking for better ways to connect with their audience. The term “storytelling” itself gets thrown around quite often in marketing departments without much thought to what it truly means.

Last week, the company that (literally) kickstarted the new virtual reality industry announced a groundbreaking new controller that lets you reach out and touch things in virtual worlds. I just gave it a spin. It’s good. Damn good.

While the emergence of new technologies and social media networks has made it easier than ever to find your audience, it has also complicated the process by which nonprofits plan campaigns and strategies. With so much content available, people are turning away from lackluster content and searching for something more. But what are they looking for?

HALIFAX, June 9, 2015 /CNW/ - DHX Media Ltd. ("DHX" or the "Company") (TSX: DHX.A, DHX.B), a key player internationally in the creation of content for families and children, today announced Degrassi: Next Class, a new series in the critically acclaimed Degrassi franchise, will premiere on Netflix in early 2016. The deal will see Netflix become the worldwide home for Degrassi: Next Class, excluding Canada, Australia and France, where the series will appear on Netflix at later dates. The series will be shot at DHX Media's studio in Toronto, Canada....

Created by the British novelist Kate Pullinger and British-Canadian multimedia artist Chris Joseph, Alice is a book that blinks, buzzes, hums, sings, jitterbugs, plays games, and, on occasion, rains and snows. Using her laptop, Fleming projected the first Alice story onto a library whiteboard … and her fifth-graders went nuts. The story was immersive like little else, the first piece of fiction that helped them see life through a character’s eyes. A few students approached her afterwards to thank her, tears glistening in their eyes....

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